


bad girls go everywhere.

by reckonedrightly



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-05
Updated: 2013-01-04
Packaged: 2017-11-23 17:24:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/624671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reckonedrightly/pseuds/reckonedrightly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Darling,” she says, and her accent twists up towards breathless heights of pretense like a dreaming spire; “I’m always right.”</p><p>Good girls go to heaven; bad girls go everywhere. A number of Irene Adler-centric snippets based on various prompts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. fish 'n' chips.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompts would be much appreciated, and possibly even acted upon.
> 
> For the prompt 'fish 'n' chips', courtesy of my sister. Written while slightly ill and very tired; edited in the same way; posted similarly, but also while in the dark at three am. Never say I make anything but the best writing decisions.

**i. _fish ‘n’ chips._**

**1998**

There’s vinegar and grease on her fingers; when she bites off half her chip (and tries to keep it from touching her tongue, it’s so hot) the remaining stump is stained red with cheap lipstick. It’s all a bit macabre. She’s hungry enough to ignore her tongue sizzling, and shoves the rest of the chip in her mouth, picks up another, licks her fingers.

Nobu, she thinks. She’s cheap wine drunk; it’s nice. Rosé-tinted glasses. She’s glowing warm and everything she says is witty and hilarious and fizzes excitingly in the air—and when she’s rich, she’s going to eat at Nobu. When she’s rich—they used to pay Roman soldiers in salt, didn’t they?

“Wow,” says Kate, “you were right about the chips,” and Irene’s attention gives a spasm; she blinks as the real world materialises around her—and then comes to a series of sharp points in Kate.

Irene gives a salt and vinegar grin. She knows her lips must be pink and rubbed raw, the red of her lipstick outlining them and spiderwebbing across the cracks. “Darling,” she says, and her accent twists up towards breathless heights of pretense like a dreaming spire; “I’m always right.”

“You’ve got salt—”

“Where—”

“Here, let me—”

“Well, aren’t you forward—”

Kate wears smooth silk blouses and dark brown leather flats with her careful jeans, and is studying law at King’s. She has a boyfriend at LSE. Her accent isn’t fake. 

She doesn’t need to have anything to do with Irene at all, but she keeps showing up. Irene marvels at this daily, and tries to find its limits. She takes her to the greasiest chippies, the clubs where people dance the closest, rolls her a joint in the flat she shares with three other people (another drama student, a musician, a girl studying dance). Kate licks vinegar off her fingers, grinds her hips against strangers, doesn’t even cough and (Irene notes) knows the etiquette of when to pass on a joint. When Irene mentions she’d like to take Kate to her favourite BDSM club, Kate says she prefers the one across town; you don’t get so many gawkers there, she finds. Irene’s not sure if she’s trying to scare Kate or educate her. Neither happen. Kate just comes, has fun and leaves—it’s thrilling—but she always stays just long enough to do something which makes Irene feel like she’s taken a wrong step and nearly tripped; Kate Norton is synonymous with that stomach-swooping feeling of expecting to hit the ground at any moment, but never quite getting there.

Like now, when Kate’s elbow is in the ketchup, and she’s kissing the salt from Irene’s mouth.


	2. smiley face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Smiley face'. Another prompt from my sister.

**ii. _smiley face._**

He’s vandalised his own wall. Irene curls herself around the cushion she’s holding onto and considers the graffiti, lit up by the fire—for a baffling, slightly laughable moment she thinks it’s an anarchy symbol, before it resolves into a smiley face. Ecstasy, she thinks comfortably. Ravers. Psychedelica. She looks back at Sherlock, who is staring at the fire with an empty look in his eyes and plucking at the violin in his lap; the notes go bronze in the air. They hum as they die.

No, can’t be that.

So why a smiley face? It gurns from the wall, its eyes vacant, like a parody of everything Sherlock Holmes accuses the human race of being. He probably put it there to make himself angry, poor darling. Irene’s not sure Sherlock knows where he is unless he has something to snarl at. Some people navigate by the stars. He prefers to define himself and where he stands through opposition. If these people are x, I am y. If they are boring, I am better. If they are happy, I don't want to be.

The flat is the kind of quiet which incites bad decisions. Irene opens her mouth, and is about to ask _do you think everyone smiles when they're happy, Mr Holmes_ or maybe _do you think you can trust people's faces, Mr Holmes_ , or even _want to run off and deface something worth defacing, Sherlock_ , before she decides she's better off sticking to the plan and their agreed definitions; she's x, he's y, and they have a story to finish, any minute now.

Another note swells, fades. Sherlock’s eyebrows flicker.

“Coventry.”

Give the man a prize. (The prize is a sweet and sleepy smile).

“I’ve never been. Is it nice?”


End file.
